Following the success of the Artemis 1 mission test (and the reveal of the suit to be used for Artemis III), Artemis II — the crewed mission around Earth’s Moon — is set to have its astronauts revealed. The time is sooner than you’d think. NASA will announce the four astronauts participating in the mission today at 11h00 Eastern Daylight Time.
Which, if you’re in a South African time zone (which we are), works out to 17h00 this evening. Watching the event is also incredibly simple. You can watch via NASA TV, a constant live stream from the space agency or you can download the NASA app. You can also check out NASA’s website (which links to the NASA TV stream).
Artemis II begins
Alternatively, you can catch the stream in the embedded link above, if you don’t feel like clicking any other links. Selecting the NASA TV stream now will bathe you in historical footage and announcements from the space agency — just the thing to get you in the mood to hear a new manned lunar mission announcement.
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Artemis II will send four astronauts on a similar journey that Artemis 1 took at the end of 2022. This time the manned Orion capsule should take a ten-day trip around the Moon, testing out the life-support systems and hopefully ending with a successful splashdown in the ocean. Today’s announcement is a joint effort between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), which means we’ll probably see a non-American or two on the flight.
Once that flight is in the bag, it’ll be time to turn our attention to Artemis III. That’s the big one — a proper return to the lunar surface, this time with the first woman and the first person of colour stepping foot on Earth’s orbiting rock.